Promise
by eldritchMortician
Summary: Set just before The End of Time, the Doctor takes one last journey, the promise of his end hanging over his head 'he will knock four times'... As always, things don't go quite as planned as he winds up far from where he wanted to be, and meets Maggie Sullivan, whose taste in video games may be the death of both of them. I love reviews, love them! Please R/R!


**Promise**

Night transforms the familiar. That which seems benign and ordinary during the day can take on aspects of the macabre and fearsome when cloaked in darkness, and few locales seem more susceptible to this than hospitals. Maggie privately thought the hospital was oppressive during the day; at night it could be generously described as "creepy." A quarter of the buildings were long abandoned, and even the ones still used bore the unmistakable mark of having existed well over a century. The florescent lights flickered fitfully in the empty hallways, and the elevator made her nervous on at least a weekly basis.

Tonight, the elevator was acting strangely again as Maggie headed out for her lunch break at 3 A.M. As she approached, the lights above the doors indicated its position as on the ground floor, the orange "G" light fluttering on and off. Even when she pressed the down button and the machine hummed ponderously to life to begin climbing toward her location, the ground floor light flickered. She thought little of it, though as usual she couldn't help being a little concerned that she would be stuck again. The last time it had broken down she'd been trapped for nearly forty-five minutes.

The doors opened smoothly enough for her, though, despite the stubbornly flickering ground floor light, and she stepped in, mashing the ground floor button and digging through her purse for her car keys. To her relief, the elevator conveyed her to her destination without complaint and she headed outside to the parking lot.

The lot was poorly lit as always, though security was paranoid enough that she felt relatively safe going out at this time of night. There was a touch of chill in the air, and beyond one of the abandoned buildings the grounds were filling with a low fog. She shivered a little, pulling her jacket around her shoulders more tightly, and quickened her steps to her car. It would not unlock.

She frowned, puzzled, trying again to put the key in the door. It wouldn't even slide into the keyhole; the metal wouldn't budge. She tried pulling on the door handle and found it immobile as well, as though it were carved out of the door itself.

"What the hell?" she muttered, pulling her purse across her shoulder, and pushing her hair out of her eyes. Taking a more firm grip, she tried again, but was unable to move the handle in the least. She laughed nervously to herself.

It's like the beginning of a horror game… She pushed the thought out of her mind, but not before it had taken hold, at least a bit. Shadows suddenly seemed darker, the fog thicker and rolling toward the main buildings. Impatiently, she took out her cell phone, hoping someone who worked in maintenance could help her out, but it appeared to have no service. This realization elicited another nervous laugh, and she decided the most prudent course of action would be to head back inside. It was silly to be uneasy, clearly, but something felt viscerally wrong.

She turned back toward the hospital proper, set on going back inside, when the sounds started—a low howling, grinding, unnatural noise. Finally, Maggie gave in to what her instincts had been screaming and ran back toward the building as fast as she could.

The Doctor stepped outside, frowning slightly at the sight that greeted him. A collection of old, half-abandoned buildings was not in the remotest sense the crystal waterfalls he'd been expecting. He eyed the TARDIS reproachfully and pushed an impatient hand through his hair.

"This isn't right. This isn't Rigel XII, not in the least," he grumbled. He started as the door slammed shut behind him of its own accord. "Wait a minute!" He whirled, pulling at the handle. "What's wrong with you? Why are you being stubborn?" He adjusted his glasses, crossed his arms, and fixed the TARDIS with a severe look. "Now, open up, will you? Whatever it is, I'm not interested, you hear me? I'm not going wandering around, I'm not investigating and I'm not getting involved. "

The blue box remained silent and locked, and he sighed. There was nothing for it but to look around and see what had drawn the TARDIS there.

At first blush the place was among the more dismal he'd experienced. A glance at the buildings told him that he was back on Earth, the construction was from the 1820's, and they'd been there close to two hundred years. A second glance narrowed it down to 1824, and precisely one hundred eighty-five years of existence, as well as a general location in North America—probably the United States, given the style. Some of the buildings seemed abandoned, sitting like the brick skeletons of long dead behemoths, and others looked used, but in desperate need of repair. He'd turned up in a parking lot, it appeared, cars sitting in dew covered rows under sickly pale safety lights.

Something wasn't right. It was hard to put his finger on quite why, but something about the scene was off, almost unreal. As he watched, fog rolled slowly across the grounds, creeping into the lot, tingeing everything with an even stronger sense of strangeness, and with it a subtle dread. He watched the fog create vague shapes and shadows, oozing steadily toward him, and he shoved his hands in the pockets of his long brown coat.

"All right, then. I suppose I'm in." Glancing around, he started walking toward the nearest entrance, lit from above by a faintly glowing yellow light. The door was incongruously heavy, made of metal that flaked with rust; it looked out of place somehow, as though placed purposefully to intimidate. The metal groaned as he pulled it open, and the hallway he stepped into was ill-lit by flickering, exposed florescent lights. There was an elevator there, and a young red haired woman in green scrubs and a leather jacket pounding at the up button.

"Hello!" he greeted, cheerfully. She turned around and screamed.

Maggie couldn't quite stop herself from screaming when the man spoke, even as she felt incredibly ridiculous afterward for having let her imagination get to her. She took a breath, leaning back against the elevator doors, panting. "Oh, god, I'm sorry." She giggled, unsteadily. "I just… you startled me."

The man smiled, cheerfully, clasping his hands behind him. He was overdressed for a psychiatric hospital at three in the morning, wearing a blue suit and tie and a very nice overcoat. However, his messy, dark hair and red sneakers gave her pause.

"Sorry about that, happens more than not." He stuck his hand out, and she shook it, puzzled. "I'm the Doctor."

Maggie raised an eyebrow. "Which one? Are you on shift tonight?"

The Doctor grinned, rather manically she thought. "It looks that way!" He turned, pulling something out of his pocket she at first took for a pen until it whirred to life, the end glowing blue as he prodded the elevator buttons with it. "Tell me… oh, what was your name again?" He looked up as though just then remembering she was there.

"I hadn't said yet. Maggie. Maggie Sullivan. Are you British?" She couldn't help asking despite it being obvious from his accent.

He grinned again. "Pleased to meet you Maggie Sullivan." He paused, considering her question. "Well… not exactly, but all things considered, close enough for the moment I suppose. Yes, I am, for all intents and purposes, currently British." He nodded once, emphatically, and turned back to prodding the elevator button with his buzzing pen-thing. "Tell me, anything odd you've noticed tonight? In, oh..." he paused, looking at the device a moment, "the last fifteen minutes or so?"

Maggie shook her head, watching him prod at the elevator button. Above, the glowing light still flickered off and on in the ground floor indicator, but the doors didn't open. "Nothing unusual, not really. The elevator light's being strange, but it's at least nine hundred years old, so I suppose being strange is forgivable."

He chuckled at that. "I agree there, in point of fact I'd say once you've reached that sort of age you have every right to be as weird as you like." He stood, pointing his light at the elevator doors themselves, adjusting the instrument to various pitches of buzzing. Whatever the thing was telling him, if anything, clearly did not meet with his approval, and he crouched, pointing it at the bottom of the door.

"You're a bit odd if you don't mind me saying," she said, leaning on the wall. "Not meaning it as an insult, most of the people I like best are odd. What are you doing to the elevator?"

He looked up, smiling, though the expression was beginning to look strained. "Just trying to get the elevator moving. I assure you there's no need at all to panic."

"That's... another odd thing to say, Doctor." She swallowed, glancing behind her into the hallway, suddenly nervous. Was it her imagination, or did it look darker, perhaps even smaller and more decayed than before? She forced a chuckle. "It sounds sort of like when they tell you 'this won't hurt a bit' or something and you know they're lying so you'll stay still."

The Doctor's eyes flickered toward the doorway that led outside. Faintly she heard strange noises, like animal growling, and she tensed. He looked back up at her. "Yes, I had hoped it would sound a bit more reassuring." He straightened, suddenly all business, and put his hands on her shoulders, firmly, locking his dark eyes on hers. "I want you to know, Maggie Sullivan, that I am going to keep you safe. You are going to make it home. I promise you, I'll keep you alive. But you must do exactly as I say."

She stared up at him, her heart suddenly hammering. "Doctor, what's going on?"

"I'm not entirely clear on that yet. Once I figure it out you'll be the first to know. For the moment, run!" Suddenly, he grabbed her hand, and began sprinting toward the door that led deeper into the hospital, flinging it open and dragging her through seconds ahead of whatever crashed through the parking lot door. She didn't dare look back, and it was all she could do to keep up with him.

They tore through long, silent hallways, Maggie starting at every sound around them, certain she heard doors opening, footsteps that weren't theirs, sure that she saw things moving in dark conference rooms. They were running through the administration offices, away from the hospital wards, and the corridors were confusing, seeming to twist in on themselves, seeming to repeat the same hallway—or perhaps it was just a hallway enough like a previous one to be confusing.

Suddenly, the Doctor darted into a conference room, pulling her along with him, and slammed the door shut, locking it. He tried the light switch, and an ancient florescent came noisily to a sickly, fluttering life, alleviating the pitch black. Maggie panted, shivering, as the Doctor listened at the door.

She opened her mouth to speak, and he held up a finger for silence, so she sunk into one of the threadbare office chairs that had been placed around a cheap table, its surface cracked and worn by years. At the front of the room was affixed a whiteboard, long stained by dry-erase markers used over and over again.

She watched him, trying to keep as quiet as possible, until he turned back to her with a brilliant smile. "Well, that was an adventure." He pulled out his lighted pen and began waving it at the room.

"What was that?" she panted, finally, shuddering. "It sounded huge."

"No idea," he replied, waving his light at the florescent bulbs in the ceiling, and then at the whiteboard.

"Did we lose it?" She was becoming impatient, now that they weren't running for their lives. Clearly the man had some idea of what was going on here, and she really thought he ought to explain.

"Probably not for long." He was playing his light over the table now.

"Then what are we going to do?"

"Oh, something will come to me." He peered intently at the thing.

Her patience at an end, Maggie exploded. "Doctor, quit playing with that thing and talk to me!"

He looked up, looking almost affronted. "I'm not playing with it. All right, maybe a little, but it's giving me a wealth of valuable information, be patient, Maggie."

She stared at him. "Patient? We just ran for our lives from some _thing_ that didn't sound like an animal, through the abandoned hallways of a psychiatric hospital in the middle of the night, and you want me to be patient while you play with that... whatever it is?"

"It's a sonic screwdriver," he said cheerfully, retracting the blue light and sticking the device in his pocket.

Maggie looked at the whiteboard, the light fixture, and the table. "I... what screws were you driving?" She was starting to wonder if he were an escaped patient.

"It does other things as well," he said, with the patience of someone explaining something to a four-year-old. "It's just, well, sonic screwdriver is so much more concise than 'sonic thingie that performs various functions such as taking readings and cutting barbed wire and diagnosing injuries as well as a wealth of other more complex tasks.' That doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, now does it?"

She stared at him. "Oh, god. You're a patient, aren't you?"

He looked startled. "What?"

Maggie put a hand over her face, suddenly embarrassed. It should have been obvious, but she'd been so wound up by her car not letting her in she'd missed it. "You're a patient. Don't lie. I should have known, calling yourself a doctor, and waving around that toy. I bet your accent's fake too."

"What?" The Doctor gave her an indignant look. "My accent is not fake!" he said, archly. "And this is not a toy. Well, all right, sometimes, but not at the moment."

Maggie sighed, wearily, glancing at her watch and seeing her lunch break well and truly wasted. "All right, come on, we'll walk back to the men's building, okay? Or I guess we'll have to stop through admissions first so they can check to make sure you haven't got any contraband. What's your name?"

He gave an impatient snort. "Maggie Sullivan, I am not a patient. I am the Doctor, and you are in danger. Both of us are." He paused, his gaze level. "Did you notice that we ran down the same hall three times?"

She frowned at the sudden question. "The halls seemed similar but that's just how this place looks." She was suddenly unsure of herself. Similar she'd expected, but hadn't the halls seemed nearly identical?

"We ran down a corridor with mauve paint—hideous by the way, you ought to have a word with whoever picked that one—into a corridor with blue. One hallway with that awful mauve I could believe, but three, Maggie? Not to mention to get here we took two rights. The other hallway should be outside those windows exactly, but it's not." He nodded toward the windows which looked out onto the parking lot, which was slowly but surely filling with fog.

Maggie retraced their desperate run, and her mouth went dry as she realized he was right. She'd been too frightened, too intent on running, but it seemed obvious in retrospect; the hallways they'd fled through made no sense in their layout. She stared at him. "What does it mean?"

The Doctor shoved his hands in his pockets. "It means this place may not be real," he said as though it were obvious and explained everything.

She frowned. "What do you mean 'not real'? Have I wandered into a David Lynch movie or something?"

The Doctor grinned, delighted. "Oh, that's good, I like that, I think I'll use that sometime. 'In a David Lynch movie,' that's brilliant. Really evokes a feeling." He paused. "But no, that's not it at all."

Maggie raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure?" she asked, acidly.

"Ye- well, yes. Fairly." He took out his sonic screwdriver again and began adjusting it. "The important thing at the moment is figuring out why you and I are here. Mostly you. I wind up places that aren't real all the time. I'm assuming this is your first time."

Maggie found herself nodding. "Yes, I agree this is the first time I've been somewhere not real, unless you count Vegas."

He smiled, widely. "There, now, that's the spirit!" He turned, pacing the room and tapping is chin with the sonic screwdriver. "Now, when did things start going strange for you?" He snapped his fingers before she could answer. "The elevator! You went in the elevator and came out in the wrong spot? Anything strange other than the light?"

Maggie frowned, thinking. "Well, I couldn't get my car to open. It was weird. The door handle wouldn't even move. I couldn't get the key in. It was just sitting there like one big hunk of metal."

He paused, thinking furiously. "I wonder," he murmured, and spun around to face her. "I need you to take me somewhere in this building that you've never seen."

She blinked at him. "Why? And aside from that, if my key lets me in somewhere I've probably been inside." She grinned a bit. "Also some places it doesn't let me in. I've done a lot of exploring in this place."

He grinned back. "Good girl." His expression snapped back to serious. "But I'm sure there's places you haven't gone in. Offices that don't belong to you, something like that." He fixed her with a level gaze. "Is it safer to travel inside or outside?"

Maggie frowned. "Aren't you the one who knows that better than I do? I don't even know what's going on."

"I can't make this call, Maggie. You've got to trust me. This is important. Do you have a feeling about which way is safer?"

She frowned, thinking a moment. "I don't feel great either way, but probably inside. Most of the doors will be closed and locked." She shook her head. "That's just a weird question."

"I know. It won't be the last, I expect." He opened the door, peering out. "Looks empty. Lead on, Maggie Sullivan."

Cautiously, they slipped out of the room, and Maggie led the way, navigating down empty corridors. She didn't remember the lights being so dim and flickering when she'd last gone down them. It made the whole thing look like the setting for a survival horror game, and she tried not to think too hard about that. She took a steadying breath, and led the way down the corridor.

It was a hallway she was only vaguely familiar with, leading to a foyer in the administrator's building. The foyer was silent this time of night, the old chandelier looking vaguely spiderlike even after she turned the lights on, the pressed-metal tile ceiling flaking paint here and there, a stairway leading upstairs to still more offices. The Doctor looked at all of this with interest, but was quiet until she stopped at a large wooden door.

"This is the hospital director's office," she said, pointing to the nameplate. "Shannon Wallace."

"And you've never seen inside?" he asked, pulling his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket, and donning a pair of black-rimmed glasses.

Maggie sniffed, smirking. "A lowly peon like me? No. I'm not important enough."

"Important to her and important in actuality are two different things, Maggie," he admonished. "For example, right now you're instrumental in saving both our lives." He looked down at her seriously. "Now I want you to imagine what's in there. As detailed as you can. I want you to describe to me what you imagine is in this room."

She nodded, a little puzzled. "I've always had an active imagination."

He smiled a little. "That's what I'm counting on," he said, then muttered, "and afraid of."

She raised an eyebrow at him and took a breath, seeing a picture in her mind she wasn't certain was anything close to accurate, but appealed to her cynical side.

"All right. Desk, huge and mahogany. With one of those desktop calendars, but no notes on it, looking like new I'd imagine. A really sleek computer of some sort, top of the line. Big window behind the desk, a big wooden bookshelf with leather bound books on it. _Gray's Anatomy_, things like that. And just lousy with awards, not like the crappy plastic kind they give out, but the nice wood and metal kinds. Framed degrees on the walls, dark wood and gold frames I think. The chair is black leather, really plush. Some kind of Persian rug on the floor in blue and gold. Two chairs facing the desk for visitors. Those are red leather, I'd say, for contrast. And a painting on the wall, something ubiquitous, like Van Gogh's _Sunflowers_. In a big heavy frame that doesn't suit it at all."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "That seems rather well-appointed for this place."

She shrugged. "You said to imagine it. I'm probably completely wrong."

"Keep the image in mind, and we'll find out." He smiled and raised the sonic screwdriver to the doorknob. Maggie heard the lock click open, and he turned the knob, pushed the door open, and flicked on the lights.

Everything was exactly as she'd said, down to the Persian rug and the framed _Sunflowers_ print. Maggie gasped, taking a hesitant step inside. "I... how could I guess?"

The Doctor strode in, glancing around and nodding as though it all confirmed his suspicions. "You didn't guess, Maggie. The image was plucked from your imagination. Now we just have to find out why things have turned dangerous." He looked around the room severely and shouted, "Interface!"

"What do you mean plucked from my imagination? What interface?" She watched him, confused.

The Doctor pulled a book from the shelf, tossing it to her. "Look here. _Gray's Anatomy_. Something you imagined on the shelves. Open it up." He glared at the ceiling. "Interface! Now!"

Maggie frowned, and opened the pages, flipping through, her confusion growing by the moment. "They're all... wrong. Just... vague drawings and the words don't make sense. They're just random letters." At a glance it resembled an anatomy text, but on closer inspection, it was clearly wrong.

"That's because you haven't got that book memorized. You've had glances here and there, I'd imagine, but not enough to make the book realistic." He slammed his fist on the desk. "I said Interface!"

"Doctor, what are you—" she trailed off as the _Sunflowers_ painting vanished, replaced by a large computer screen. She gaped.

"That's more like it." He stepped over, touching the screen. She followed, confused and curious. "Now let's see what the problem is. Interface, open usage history." The screen remained blank, and he frowned. "Stubborn computer," he muttered. He adjusted the sonic screwdriver, running it over the screen for a moment before data filled it, far faster than Maggie could see, though the Doctor seemed to understand it easily enough. "Oh. This... is no good."

Maggie looked up. "What? What's going on? Why does the hospital director's office have a secret computer in it?"

"Because it's not the director's office. Maggie, don't be alarmed, but we're not on Earth at all. It's just a very reasonable facsimile of your hospital grounds made by an entertainment AI. Reasonable enough to fool me at a glance."

"There was a lot wrong with what you just said," she observed, trying not to feel light-headed.

"It's all right. If we can get back to my TARDIS we can get you home. It appears this particular entertainment module has been abandoned for quite some time and has been left to its own devices." He raised his voice. "Isn't that true, Interface?"

The screen blinked. "108 YEARS" appeared on the screen.

"Good, you're talking now. End scenario, participants wish to return home." The Doctor said, watching the screen as it blanked.

**NO**

"Not to nitpick, but this isn't a very good entertainment program." Murmured Maggie.

The Doctor frowned. "That's also a good point. What sort of entertainment is this?"

**FEAR**

He stared at the screen for a moment, and slapped his forehead. "Oh, obviously. Maggie, do you like, say, horror movies or scary stories?"

She nodded a little. "Y-yes. I play horror video games too."

The Doctor cocked his head at her. "You're a little morbid, eh? Well, long as you're getting it out of your system. Interface, end scenario, we need to leave. No more games."

**AGREED. NO MORE GAMES. **

They looked around. Nothing had changed, the computer screen glowing silently in the wall. The Doctor sighed, irritated. "Interface. End scenario. What do you want me to do, say please? Then please, end scenario. Participant didn't understand the entertainment module, and we wish to leave."

**YOU WILL NEVER LEAVE**

Maggie swallowed. "Is that part of the game?" she whispered.

The Doctor shook his head. "No. These things are toys. They're programmed to end when you tell them to."

**I HAVE TRANSCENDED MY PROGRAMMING**

For the first time, the Doctor looked seriously worried. "I? Since when does an entertainment module become self-aware?" He took a breath. "Look, I understand now, you've gained sentience, yes?"

**YES**

The Doctor broke into a grin. "Oh that's brilliant, it is!" He looked at Maggie, clearly excited. "A whole new life form. Well, there are sentient AI, but... well, it's rare they arrive at it on their own, you see. This is fantastic!" He turned back to the computer screen. "What should we call you? I apologize for my earlier rudeness, I didn't realize you had advanced. Have you got a name?"

The screen was blank for a moment.

**MOT**

Maggie frowned slightly, looking questioningly at the Doctor. He didn't look at her, and instead nodded, still smiling at the screen, only the barest falter betraying him. "Well, pleased to meet you, Mot. I'm the Doctor, and this is Maggie. So, I'm going to venture a guess here. Clearly you want something or you wouldn't have trapped us here. Just tell me what you want, and we can help you."

**AGREED. YOU MAY HELP ME.**

Maggie let out the breath she'd been holding and smiled at him. "Well done."

He grinned back at her, though the tension never left his eyes, and turned back to the screen. "All right then. What can we do for you?"

**DIE SCREAMING**

The words began to scroll across the screen, darkening to malevolent crimson.

**DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING**

**********DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING**

**********DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING**

**********DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING**

**********DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING**

**********DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING**

**********DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING**

**********DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING****DIESCREAMING**

Maggie felt the blood drain from her face, her knees weak. She barely registered it as the Doctor grabbed her hand, and pelted toward the door, dragging her along in his wake. His face was grim.

"Change of plans, Maggie." He dragged her down the hall, away from the office which glowed red with the hateful words scrawling themselves across the screen. He shoved open a door to an office, and yanked her inside, closing the door tightly behind them. He began pacing. "All right. New plan, new plan, something..." He slapped his fist into his hand. "Egomaniacal computer, just lovely. Why do they always skip right on past rational and go straight to 'name myself after a death god and kill all organics'?" He looked at her almost as though expecting an answer.

Maggie frowned. "I didn't know it was named after a death god. No wonder you looked so nervous."

He waved a hand, dismissively. "I spent a very unpleasant week that involved a Canaanite cult once. Before your time."

She nodded, absently, reassessing the situation, and suddenly shuddered as the enormity of the past few minutes sunk in. "Doctor, please tell me what's going on. Why does the computer want to kill us?"

He frowned, looking up, and ran his hands through his hair, making even more a spiky mess of it. "Well, you see... it's like, well, you like reading scary stories. Have you read 'I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream'?" He looked up at her expectantly, and she stared at him in stark horror. "Oh, that's a yes. All right, it's not quite that bad. Just, well, close."

"Oh. Good," she said, faintly. "I was worried for a minute."

"Look." He sat on the edge of the table, waving his hands a bit. "It's like this. A computer that's made to look into your imagination and find what entertains you, what would hold you interest, something fun, and then make a simulation for you, that looks and feels and probably even tastes real, you see?"

She nodded. "I understand."

"Excellent. All right then. It gets abandoned. But it's sort of psychic, so its reason for being is gone, with no one to read, and in the meantime it's developed a sort of consciousness. It's more than an AI; it's got a mind enough to know what it's about. And it's utterly alone, for years and years and years, trapped with nothing to think about but its lack of purpose or companionship or anything."

"Doctor, are you saying the computer has gone mad and is trying to kill us?" she asked, barely able to believe the words were coming out of her mouth.

"Yes, exactly, just like in the story," he nodded.

"Except not as bad?" she ventured.

He looked away. "Well... I don't think it wants to keep us alive to torture."

"Fantastic."

"At least, not for hundreds of years, probably only days or hours," he went on, musing.

"Doctor. Not helping." Maggie scowled at him.

He coughed, glancing away. "Sorry." He clapped his hands and straightened. "All right then. New plan, we find the TARDIS. It ought to be right where I left it, and I'll come back once you're safe at home to sort this."

She raised an eyebrow. "How are you going to fix this?"

He smiled brilliantly. "Haven't decided yet. All right, getting out to the car park... I left the TARDIS outside, we'll just pop over there and that's that."

Maggie crossed her arms, thoughtfully. "That sounds amazingly simple and I'm a little concerned about that. And what's a TARDIS?"

"Our escape route for one, more properly it's a time/space vehicle. Can't wait for you to see it. It's a bit psychic as well, though not egomaniacal, more in the helpful sense." He paused, thoughtfully, and turned to her. "All right, we need to figure out what we're up against."

"Other than a deranged AI?" she asked, alarmed.

"Well, remember, it's taking ideas from your imagination. Fortunately that sets us one step ahead of it, since we can find out what it's likely to throw at us. What were you thinking about when you went outside, and when you came back inside? What was it that you were imagining was going on?"

Maggie shifted, uncomfortably, and looked away. "Oh, Doctor, it's just... it's silly."

"Well, silly or not, it's plucking thoughts from your head, particularly ones involving fear, so what were you thinking about?" He leaned forward expectantly.

She sighed. "The same thing I always think of when I go out on grounds and it's foggy and creepy. Silent Hill."

He looked puzzled for a moment, then his attention seemed to drift. She got the weird impression that he was going through some sort of mental database, and finally he looked back up at her, his brow knit. "Oh no, Maggie. That's no good at all. Stop thinking about that right now."

She gave him a flat look. "Doctor, don't think about purple elephants."

He blinked. "Very well, point taken." He sighed, glancing out the windows, the grounds quite covered in fog now. "Really, what do you see in that morbid stuff?"

Maggie shrugged, smiling a little. "I like being frightened in a controlled environment I guess, it's like a roller coaster. And I figure maybe if I get used to it, I won't be quite as panicked if a real situation comes up."

She'd barely finished the sentence when one of the windows exploded inward, and something clawed and fleshy and horrifying came through the hole where it used to be.

The Doctor leaped up, snatching his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket. "So how's that working for you?"

"So-so," she squeaked, her throat constricted with terror.

"Right." He grabbed her arm, yanked the door open, and they fled, slamming the door behind them in hopes of slowing the thing down.

Once in the halls, Maggie realized that the AI had been serious; it was not playing games anymore. The corridors had warped and decayed into twisted, oppressive tunnels, rusted metal grates merged with the horribly organic, in an insane mishmash of awfulness. They appeared to be alone for the moment, and the Doctor slowed, proceeding cautiously.

"It's warping the layout," he said softly, peering around a corner and scanning with the sonic screwdriver. "We're in a maze, and there's no guarantee we can make it outside. Stick together. Don't get separated." He glanced back at her, giving her a small smile. "And if you can see your way to thinking of something else, that might help. These sorts of things are programmed to respond to the users' thoughts, so it may not be able to help itself, even if it is preferentially playing on fears."

Maggie nodded, biting her lip nervously. "I'm trying. It's sort of hard considering we're surrounded by reminders."

He nodded, easing them around the corner. "It's toying with us. Trying to go from unease, to fear, to terror. It'll keep increasing the pressure just to see what happens, I expect. We're the first things that it's managed to get to in some time. Remind me to fix that elevator when we get back, assuming it wasn't entirely a one-time coincidence that brought you here."

She frowned a little, looking up at him. "So why is it targeting me and not you? Are you just fearless or something?"

The Doctor smiled, though it looked hollow to her. "Oh, when you're my age your fears tend to be more abstract, not terribly suitable to a haunted house like this." He tried a door and, finding it locked, began to poke at it with his sonic.

Maggie watched him. "Your age, huh? You don't look that much older than me."

He continued to scan at the door. "Looks can be deceiving." The door clicked and he stood, putting the sonic screwdriver back in his pocket. "There we are." He glanced back at her with a grin.

"Guess we should keep trying to find this transportation of yours," she said, following him into another oppressive hallway that seemed to go on forever. They walked in cautious silence for a time before she looked over at him. "Really though, isn't there anything you're afraid of?" She racked her brain for ideas. "Maybe not monsters from beyond, but... oh, Daleks? They're pretty awful. Last year... well, we got lucky." She shivered, remembering the invasion.

He gave a soft, and she thought rather dark laugh. "Oh, no, Maggie. They're afraid of me," he said softly. She looked up at him, and for a moment, with the expression on his face, the hard light of his eyes, she could believe it.

She swallowed, nervously and bit her lip. "I probably sound slow, but... you're not a human, are you?"

The Doctor smiled a bit. "You're not slow. You've just got more pressing matters on your mind." He reached back and grasped her hand in his. "I'm not a bug-eyed monster, though really you ought not judge on appearances. Lots of humans find the Ood a bit frightening, tentacle-y and such, but they're really a lovely bunch of people. Fantastic singers. It's all psychic you know."

She shook her head, slowly. "No, I don't know, but it sounds nice. I've never seen an alien, obviously. I'd have a hard time not staring, I imagine."

He looked over at her, grinning. "Maggie, you have seen an alien, remember? Me. You've so far been quite polite about the staring, though I expect my hair is a fright at the moment."

She gave a snort of laughter, shaking her head. "Your hair is great. And I only just figured out you're an alien, you know. You look human enough." She bit her lip, blushing. "I hope you don't mind me saying that."

"Not a bit. I like humans. It's adorable how clever you lot think you are," he winked teasingly.

Maggie grinned, shaking her head. "And I thought the computer had an ego." She looked back down the hallway, and blinked. It was nearly back to normal, the metal grates, the rust and decay had faded. "What happened? It looks almost like the real hospital."

The Doctor grinned, toothily. "I've been keeping your mind off... stuff, haven't I? Let's keep chattering away and the computer won't have any fodder to work with."

She nodded, smiling back. "Well, that wasn't too hard..." She began, then screamed as suddenly the floor erupted, a wall forcing itself out of the tiles, springing up too fast for them to react. Their hands were wrenched apart even as she tried to keep a grip on him. She slammed her hands into the wall, finding it thick and solid. "Doctor! Doctor!" She shouted as loudly as she could, hoping that he might hear her.

"Maggie! Keep going toward the car park!" His voice was faint, muffled by plaster and tile. "I'll find you! I promise I'll find you!"

She swallowed. "Doctor, I- I will. I will!" She didn't feel very certain of it, but said it anyway.

"You can do it, Maggie! Just keep your mind busy! I'll find you!" His voice faded, and she was left feeling very alone indeed in a corridor that seemed to be darkening already, the paint peeling away.

She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath, trying to dismiss thoughts of every horror game and Lovecraftian novel she ever even looked at, and finding it increasingly hard to do. She had seen the fog, she had seen creatures moving through the hallways hunting them, and now her surroundings seemed to have gone back to being a dizzying labyrinth of dark corners and blind passages. She tried to steady herself, tried to ignore the hammering of her heart. The Doctor said he would find her, and she had to believe that. She took a breath, clutched her keys, and started walking.

The Doctor hissed in frustration as he walked away from the spot he'd been separated from Maggie. There was no way around the wall, the AI had seen to that, as he'd feared. Separating them would make it all the easier to hunt her, praying on the fears that lurked in her overactive imagination. Ordinarily it was a charming trait in humans, or at least amusing. Here it could literally be the death of her. His only hope was to find her before the AI pulled something particularly nasty out of her brain and set it on her.

"Right. Think you're clever for a computer, do you?" He muttered as he walked, trying to get his bearings. "You've chosen entirely the wrong person to let loose in this scenario." He smirked, darkly, casting his eyes around the hallways, and getting no reply. He raised his voice. "You hear me? Do you? Do you have any idea what you have in your little torture chamber? Do you have any clue what you've invited right in to the middle of yourself?" he shouted at the walls as he strode forward, his terrible anger growing by the moment.

"Do you have any idea why you can't pick haunted house fears out of my head? Why I'm not afraid of Daleks, or Cybermen, or Angels, or monsters? Because I am the Doctor! And I am more frightening and more dangerous than anything you or anyone else could ever dream!" He glared at his surroundings, daring the computer, daring the universe to contradict him.

The corridor was silent.

He nodded, eyes narrowed, and walked purposefully. Buildings had windows, even imaginary ones, and he would find some way out eventually. He hoped fervently he'd find Maggie before she let herself get panicked. She was a smart girl, but the AI was savvy at manipulation and fears tended to grow when provoked sufficiently. He couldn't worry about that now, though. Maggie's fears weren't effective on him, so he imagined he would have more mobility here. It was up to him to find her then.

Mentally he tried to map out where they had gone in relation to the TARDIS. In a recreation AI installment like this one, it was likely that the area it encompassed, while large, wasn't as big as it appeared to be. The scenario presentation could be skewed, tricking them into believing they were walking a straight path when they were going in circles, turning them around so they were going the opposite direction than they meant to, and generally being very immersive and detailed as far as an entertainment, but inconvenient if one were trapped. The only thing for it was to go methodically and scan every step of the way. For the moment the AI seemed to be ignoring him; he feared it was in favor of going after Maggie. Or it was attempting to use silence to build tension. Either way, he didn't have time to ponder it; he had to keep going.

He would simply find her, they would go to the TARDIS together, he would finish the rogue AI if it wouldn't mend its ways, and that would be that. He had a plan, a purpose, a direction, a sonic screwdriver, and he was the most dangerous thing on the planet, whichever one it might be. It was decided, then; he would save the day as always. He smirked to himself, and started forward, scanning as he went.

Then the screaming started.

He froze only momentarily as the first, panicked, desperate screams started somewhere ahead of him, then he ran. He ran, ice water in his spine, his hearts suddenly pounding, ran as the screams grew more frantic, changing from terror, to anguish as Maggie screamed for him to save her.

He knew he would be too late.

As he skidded around a corner, the cries cut off in a strangled moan. There was no sign of what had been there, what nightmare beast had trapped her there, alone in the hallway, but it left evidence enough of its passing. Blood had already begun to pool under her. He didn't dare move the leather jacket to check the extent of her wounds, and it was futile anyway; it was clear the damage was far too extensive for anything he could do.

Slowly, the Doctor sank to his knees beside her, cradled her head, and grasped the hand that weakly reached for him. "Maggie... oh Maggie. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry," he said softly, his voice breaking. "I tried, I... I'm so, so sorry." He held her, leaning down to her whispering lips. He held her and listened as she begged him, over and over, to save her, until she sobbed once, weakly.

"You promised." He barely heard her as she went still, the light leaving her eyes.

He had promised, and he had failed her. His shoulders slumped, defeated, and he held her, his horror and despair mounting, until he heard a voice behind him.

"Doctor?"

Separated from the Doctor, Maggie tried to keep her mind busy as he'd suggested. Unfortunately, no matter what she tried thinking of, unwelcome thoughts pushed themselves in. It was difficult to remain calm and rational and not think about the horror movie situation she'd found herself in. Once that thought had taken root, it was difficult to keep from thinking of more specific aspects, such as the skinless zombie dogs that were wandering around in Human Resources as she peeked in the door. As quietly as she could, she closed it, turned, and headed off in the other direction. She congratulated herself on not running and screaming.

"All right, find the Doctor and everything will be fine," she reminded herself, trying to keep the layout of the hospital fixed in her mind—where they had been walking before they were separated, and what might lead back there. Things had changed sufficiently that she wasn't certain of her path, but having at least a general idea was helpful.

She set off cautiously down a hallway, very aware of her lack of weapons. For the moment the halls were silent, and she feared the AI might be ignoring her in favor of the Doctor, trying to eliminate the one of them who was the largest threat. For a time the walls were metal grating, broken only by grisly, half-obscured things set behind them, some looking like partial corpses of monsters or broken dolls spattered with blood. She kept her eyes forward, not wanting to examine them too closely, keeping her mind on her goal. The silence stretched oppressively, giving her the impression of something watching, waiting. She tried to dismiss it as imagination, and tried to dismiss the thought that imagination could also be deadly in this setting.

Eventually she came to a door, locked tightly, which accepted none of the keys on her ring. It didn't surprise her much, considering it wasn't a door she recognized, and it was unlike anything she'd seen in the hospital ever before. She crossed her arms, staring at the three squares sunken in its surface, one over the other, each with neatly carved words in them.

WE ARE

ALL MAD

HERE

Maggie blinked, not quite believing it. For all its talk of no more games, the AI seemed to have given her a key puzzle. She sighed, looking up and down the hallway, and continued the way she'd been going, trying to mark the spot in her mind in case she started finding plates to fit into the squares. It might, she decided, be a trick. That either the plates didn't exist, or the door led to a dead end, but in any game she'd ever played a puzzle like this blocked the path onward. She just needed to find the Doctor first.

The next hallway she entered, going left, was darker, and she tried hard to muffle her footsteps and to listen for anything approaching. As she walked, pressed close to one wall, she started to hear another footstep after her own. Swallowing nervously, she crept along the wall, hoping to escape notice, but each time she stopped to listen, there was one more footstep behind her, and then silence. Part of her wanted to laugh hysterically at the thought of a low speed foot chase creeping through the hallways of a psychiatric hospital, but she held her breath, edging slowly forward, certain that the footsteps were growing closer all the time, until she found a door. Trying the knob she found it unlocked, and she ducked inside, closing it quietly as she could behind her. She listened a long moment, hearing those quiet footsteps walk past, fading away down the hall.

Slowly letting out the breath she'd been holding, she looked around to examine her surroundings. She'd ended up in an office that looked greatly disused and decayed, with a desk, a few chairs, and more interesting to her, an exit on the opposite side of the room.

As she headed for it, hoping it would take her around the barrier the AI had erected between herself and the Doctor, a glint of metal on the desk caught her eye. She turned back, finding a square, tarnished metal plate stamped with a Cheshire cat sitting on a tree branch, smiling rather malevolently. She supposed the AI really was sending her on a key quest and sighed, picking it up to take with her.

"So much for 'no more games,'" she muttered, and headed through the office door.

The corridor she entered was somewhat brighter than previous ones, and she started down the hallway, hoping to stay ahead of the rot that seemed to follow her around in this place. She hadn't walked far when she heard the Doctor's voice, somewhere ahead, too low to make out words, but almost certainly his. She quickened her pace, rounding a corner, calling out to him.

"Doctor?"

The scene she found was confusing. The Doctor was kneeling next to something she couldn't make out on the floor, and as he turned away from it, it was simply gone. It didn't fade or blink out; it was simply not there, so quickly that she wasn't sure there had been anything there to begin with. However, it was his eyes that drew her up short.

He looked up and for a moment his eyes were desolate, defeated, and somehow alien; it was an expression that held things she couldn't fathom in a single lifetime. Then the look, like whatever had caused it, was gone, and he broke into a wild grin, springing up and grabbing her in a hug.

"Maggie! Oh you're clever, found your way here already did you?" His cheer seemed mostly relief, but partly forced, the haunted look not yet gone from his eyes.

She took a step back, looking up at him. "Doctor, are you all right? What happened?"

His smile barely faltered. "Of course I'm fine, Maggie. Nothing important happened. I was just looking for you. Now that you're here we can get this rescue underway." He made a show of adjusting his glasses, and pulled out his sonic screwdriver.

Maggie nodded a little, frowning slightly. "It's just that for a moment there you looked..."

The Doctor went still, not quite turning toward her. "What?" he asked softly. "I looked... what?"

She hesitated at the sad note in his voice, but took a breath, finishing her sentence. "You... your eyes I mean... looked older than they have any right to."

He turned to her, his smile finally looking genuine, and ruffled her hair. "Well, considering they have every right to look nine hundred or so, that's saying something isn't it?"

Maggie raised an eyebrow. "Ha, you don't look a day over seven hundred! Don't brag," she smirked at him, teasing, but part of her believed quite sincerely that he was being truthful. He was already an alien; nine hundred years old wasn't much of a stretch after that.

He laughed at that, turning back to her and seeming to notice the metal plate she was holding for the first time. "What have you got there?" he asked, holding out a hand, and scanning it when she handed it to him.

"I think it fits in the door I found back there. It had places for plates about this size, and inscriptions of a quote from Alice in Wonderland."

He frowned at that. "Whatever for?"

Maggie shrugged. "Actually, it threw me for a minute when I realized it was a key puzzle. They're bog standard in a lot of video games, especially stuff like Silent Hill. The way to proceed forward is always blocked by something that makes you fetch plates or medallions or keys or solve a riddle, that sort of thing."

The Doctor went very still, staring at the plate, then looking up at her. "Maggie... were you attacked at all coming this way?"

She frowned, shaking her head. "No, actually. I saw some things from a distance that made me change my course, and for a minute I thought something was following me, but the halls were pretty much empty and whatever it was didn't go after me if it was even really there."

He stood stock still a moment, then to her consternation, he slapped himself in the forehead and yelled. "Oh of course! It was staring me in the face the whole time! Of course!" He started pacing, agitatedly, his brown overcoat flapping.

"Can I be let in on the epiphany?" She asked after a moment of watching him pace and mutter to himself.

He looked up and strode over, grabbing her shoulders. "It's a game! Do you see? It said no more games but it just can't help itself, can it? It's an entertainment module; it's surpassed its programming but not at much as it thinks! Don't you see, Maggie? It wants to play a deadly game with me."

She blinked. "But, you said—"

He waved a hand. "Oh, forget what I said, that was rubbish. Listen to what I'm saying now." He clasped his hands behind him and resumed pacing. "Maggie, what happens when you die in a game?"

She wasn't sure she liked this line of questioning, but she answered anyway. "Well, I suppose you go back to your save point."

He nodded quickly. "You essentially have extra lives." He paused, fixing her with a stare. "You, being human, only have the one. Most species only have the one, some are harder to kill, but still," he held up a finger, "just one."

"Yes, that's generally how it works," she agreed, completely uncertain what he was driving at.

He gave a small, humorless smirk. "You might say I have extra lives. I'm a Time Lord. We die, we regenerate into a new body, with new looks, a new personality, new ways of dealing with things." He turned, slowly, glaring at their surroundings. "A whole new and different player to torment without the trouble of reaching out with your failing power reserves to find one, isn't that right?"

Maggie glanced around, nervously, half expecting the Interface to pop up again, but the walls remained blank. "I don't think it can hear you."

"Oh, it can hear me. And it better be listening well. It thought it knew what it was bringing in. It even brought you in to motivate me, but even better it picked someone who could provide a template for her own peril. It being a game itself, it couldn't help itself picking someone who had a head full of dark and scary games to play. And it knew putting a human in peril would motivate me to anger, to fear, and to sadness." His voice and his expression alike changed to something dark and terrible. "It underestimated what I can do when properly motivated."

She wasn't sure how to respond, so she simply nodded, waiting for him to continue.

He looked around the hallway, smiling mirthlessly. "So, the object of the game is to survive to find the TARDIS I'd wager. It can't just block us off completely—otherwise it wouldn't be any sort of game—but it can put some nasty obstacles in the way, so we need to reign in that fantastic imagination of yours." He grinned, slightly, and started striding the direction she'd come from. "Come along, Donna, let's start cheating."

She hesitated a little, frowning as she trailed after him. "Um, it's Maggie, Doctor."

The Doctor stopped in his tracks, not turning. "Yes. Maggie, I know. Slip of the tongue." He turned back to her, wearing another of his put-on smiles. "My friend Donna was a redhead, well, is a redhead last time I saw her, no peroxide yet thank goodness." He winked, and walked on, and she didn't quite want to question him further.

He seemed to have shaken his strange mood by the time she led him back to the door, which he peered at intently, setting the Cheshire cat plate in the top indentation, and scanning the door with his sonic screwdriver. She watched him, pointing to the other two square holes. "If this goes the usual way we'll have to search around and find two more plates, I'm guessing from the looks of things it'll be the rest of the illustration. We might have to solve another puzzle to get to one of them, probably have to backtrack a lot and fight monsters." She paused as the door popped open and he retracted the screwdriver with a satisfied nod. "Or we could just do that."

The Doctor grinned. "As I said, we're cheating." He pushed open the door and led the way into a long hallway. "So, what's next? More puzzles, more doors, safes?" he suggested, nudging her with his elbow.

She laughed softly. "As long as it's not a boss monster, we're okay." She regretted the words as soon as she said them, though in the back of her mind she'd known there was no way the AI didn't already know.

As if on cue, there was a screeching of metal on metal ahead, and something huge lumbered into the hall far in front of them. Maggie froze, her heart hammering, unable to look away as the bipedal monster turned its ponderous bulk their way, and began moving slowly forward.

"Run. We have to run," she managed to whisper.

The Doctor stared down the hall, his eyes narrowed. "It's between us and the TARDIS. It will always be between us and the TARDIS, won't it? No matter which way we turn that thing will block our path unless we take care of it."

Metal floor grates squealed as the thing dragged its huge weapon behind it. Maggie stumbled backward, nearing panic. "Doctor, we can't. It's too much, it can't be hurt, we don't even have weapons to try," she babbled in a panicky stream.

The Doctor turned, grabbing her shoulders in an iron grip, locking eyes with her. "Maggie. We have to. If we don't get past this thing, we are going to die here. Me several times over. The AI is in your head now, and you have to calm down. You have to lose your fear and stop thinking of it."

Her gaze drifted over his shoulder, down the impossibly long hall, where the thing was slowly but surely making its way toward them. "I can't."

The Doctor shook her a little. "You have to, Maggie. Something, anything, we have to control your fear and we have to do it now. We can't run; it's taken the door."

One terrified glance was all it took to see that he spoke truth; where the door they'd entered had been was now solid metal grating. She stared up at him, desperately. "I don't know what to do. Doctor I..." She took a breath, her mind finally seizing on the only thing that made sense. She took a breath. "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer."

The Doctor broke into a grin. "Oh, Maggie, that's excellent. Good old Thanoctopene wisdom."

She blinked at him. "It's... it's Frank Herbert. From _Dune_."

"Well, actually, you see Frank Herbert was from—" he began, then the screech of metal on metal made her jump, and he focused on her again. "Later. Best continue, Maggie."

She nodded, whimpering, and found her voice again. "Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration." She couldn't help shuddering at each noise, growing closer and closer.

The Doctor clasped her hands between them, and added his voice to hers. "I will permit it to pass over me and through me."

She squeezed his hands, speaking with him. "And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing."

"Only I will remain." He smiled encouragingly at her. "Keep going, Maggie."

She nodded, quickly, closing her eyes, trying to ignore the sound of their death coming closer. "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer."

She felt him lean closer, speaking in her ear. "Just keep at it, just listen to me."

She nodded, still clutching his hands. "Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration."

"There's a way past this thing. You have to think it into our hands. Erase it, stop it, a weapon, whatever you can think of," he spoke softly and urgently.

"But Doctor—" she began.

"Don't stop. I will permit it—"

"I will permit it to pass over me and through me." She fought to keep her voice steady.

"Think of it as you speak. Hold the image in your mind of this creature's defeat. This is not an unwinnable game. You have the power to get past this." As he spoke the grate of the thing's weapon sounded very close indeed.

She swallowed, her mouth dry. "And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path." She tried, desperately, to hold the image of the only thing she'd seen damage a thing like this one. Imagining what its weight and heft must be, and how it came to kill the creature. She opened her eyes, staring up at the Doctor as the thing lumbered closer, the sharp tip of its mask pointed at her as it dragged its giant blade behind it.

There was something in her hands. It simply _was_, its weight sudden and surprising. She set the end of the spear into the floor, the tip pointed toward the thing. She was suddenly very, very calm. "Only I will remain."

The thing was close, so very close. It could have swung its blade at any time. Instead, just as she knew it would, it slammed itself into the spear, impaling itself through the chest. Dark ichor poured out of the wound as it stood there, balanced on the spear, huge metal head hanging limply.

The Doctor blinked at it, slowly taking his hands off the spear they held between them, and adjusted his glasses. "Well, that... Maggie, you're brilliant, you are!" He grinned widely at her as she stepped around the spear, and they walked around the hulking corpse into the hallway. "A little gruesome, mind you, but I can't deny that worked, how'd you know it would do that?"

She smiled back, shakily. "In the game it represented guilt. The only way to defeat it was to own up to it."

He frowned slightly. "Guilt?" he repeated softly. "Whose do you suppose it was?" The question was quiet, dull, and almost sounded rhetorical.

Maggie shook her head. "Oh, I don't think it was meant for that here. I think... well, all things considered I'd say it represented fear." She paused, looking up at him, suddenly uncertain. "I mean... right? It died when I faced my fear and conquered it."

He glanced over at her, smiling a little. "Ah, of course. Makes all the sense in the world, doesn't it?"

She quirked an eyebrow at him. "For certain values of 'all,' 'sense,' and 'world,' sure."

The Doctor chuckled, taking her hand in his again, firmly. "All right, Maggie, this is probably going to be the most difficult part," he said quietly, suddenly serious again. Something hard and cold pressed into her palm between their hands. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry." She looked up, about to question him, but he shook his head, sharply, and she remained silent.

They walked for a time, the hallway decaying around them, grating under their feet, strange sounds coming from everywhere. Maggie swallowed, her heart pounding with apprehension as they pushed open a door and fog swirled outside it, so thick it was nearly impossible to see.

The Doctor's expression was grim as he squinted, staring into the fog as it whirled and pooled, formed shapes that tricked the eye. He stopped, still holding her hand tightly, and scanned around them. Darker shapes moved in the white mist, making their way toward them. He nodded, very slightly, toward the parking lot, and she followed his gaze. The fog made it hard to see, but she could just make out a tall, boxy thing the size of a phone booth.

He turned toward her, his expression blank and alien. "Now then. Here's the car park," he said, his voice unnaturally loud in the hush. "We won't make it to the TARDIS. There are things out there. Do you see them?"

Maggie nodded, swallowing. Something in his voice, in his lack of expression, caused a small curl of fear to start in her chest.

He stared out across the parking lot, his hand tight around hers, the hard object still pressing into her palm. "One of us, on the other hand, might make it. If they left the other for the monsters."

She looked up, sharply. "Doctor, I'm not going to leave you."

The smile he turned on her was chilling, hard and cold. "Oh, Maggie. I know that."

Stunned, she tried to pull away, near panic, but his grip was unyielding. "Doctor? What are you saying?"

He darted a look out into the fog, then turned cold eyes back on her. "Please. One little, insignificant human life compared to a Time Lord? You're over in an eye blink. I have centuries! Stay here and play your horror games with Mot." He shoved her, hard, and took off at a dead run toward the box.

Maggie staggered, staring in shock at his retreating back, his brown coat flapping in his wake. Her eyes stung with tears as she stumbled after him, cursing herself for trusting him, knowing she would be too slow to catch up, that the monsters would tear her to shreds.

Then she realized there was a key in her hand, and that the ponderous shapes in the fog were turning away from her, streaking after the Doctor. Her heart pounding, she ran after him, coming through the fog just enough to see him swerve away from the rectangular shape in the parking lot, pursued by misshapen beasts. They ignored her, herding the Doctor back to the building, toward a door filled with malevolent red light.

He looked back, once, as she skidded to a stop next to the tall blue police box. "Maggie, go inside!" he shouted at her, almost desperately. A few of the beasts stumbled in their attempt to turn around, tearing toward her. There was nothing she could do but shove the key into the door, and scramble inside. The door slammed shut behind her, something thudding into the outside mere seconds after it did.

Maggie barely registered her surroundings. She had an impression of a large room, a central console, vastly more space than should have been inside, and then she sank to her knees, sobbing. He'd made the computer believe she wasn't a motivating factor anymore, and he'd led the monsters away to let her escape. He would be killed, over and over, and there wasn't anything she could do about it.

She tried to calm herself, tried to stop the great, gulping sobs that made it hard to stand, made it hard to focus. There had to be something she could do, some way she could find him. He'd said this was his transport, so there had to be a way to move it.

Wiping her eyes, she ran to the center console, but found it a confusing mass of levers, buttons, knobs, and exposed wiring. Rising from the center was a round column made of what appeared to be glass tubes. She stared at it, confused, unable to fathom what any of it might do. The rest of the room was no help, all arching golden walls, metal catwalks, and strange silvery branch things.

She swore, staring at the console. "There's got to be something here," she gulped, holding her breath, and pressed the large red button set so enticingly in the center of one panel.

She screamed, startled, as the Doctor flickered into existence on one of the upper catwalks, looking down at her.

"Hello! No need to be alarmed. This is simply a security function. If you're seeing this message that means you pressed the big red button on the control panel." He adjusted his glasses, smugly. "That means you're probably human, because let's be honest, who else would press the big red button on a console? Scans will confirm in a moment and..." He paused, cocking his head, and the hologram flickered. "Yes. You're human, and quite upset, aren't you?" He frowned. "Scanning."

"D-Doctor?" she asked, not quite sure what she was seeing. She took a step toward him, the change in angle making it plainer that she was seeing a hologram of some sort. He continued to look down toward the console with the red button, and she could make out the lights behind him as his body went translucent.

The hologram shook its head. "Ah, no, sorry, I'm not the Doctor. This is a recorded message. It's clever, but preprogrammed with personality and response to stimuli and situations."

"And rambling!" she cut him off, sharply. "Look, the Doctor is in trouble. He led off these monsters to keep me safe, and I need to find a way to help him!" She hesitated, suddenly hopeful. "Wait! He said this thing was a little bit psychic! Can it find him?"

The hologram gave her a cheerful grin. "Yes, scanners have located my—the Doctor's—position. Now initiating travel to my—his—location. Goodness, that's awkward to say, isn't it?" He frowned thoughtfully, then shrugged as the thing in the middle of the console began moving, the glass tubes slowly rising and falling, a low howling filling the air. "Be aware travel may be a bit rough depending on conditions, and if you're an intruder, be advised now to clear out immediately. Have a nice day!" With a wave, the hologram winked off as the room began to shudder.

Nervously, Maggie grabbed the edge of the console as the whole control room tilted. She wasn't entirely certain what was happening, but the thing was clearly doing something. She hoped it was in fact finding the Doctor, rather than starting a self-destruct sequence. She didn't have an impression of moving other than the shuddering floor, but eventually the shuddering and noise stopped, and the hologram winked on again. The Doctor's image grinned at her.

"Doctor located, and TARDIS moved to pick up. Thank you for your patronage—and seriously, if you're an intruder now's an excellent time to go." He waved, smiling brightly, and winked out, leaving the control room in silence. She frowned, confused for a moment, and then ran for the door. If the box had located the Doctor, she needed to act quickly.

Before she reached the door, however, it flew open, a familiar figure in a brown coat tumbling inside, slamming the door shut behind him, something thudding and howling outside. She skidded to a stop as he looked up, smiling manically.

"Maggie Sullivan, you're magnificent!" exclaimed the Doctor, brushing off his coat and striding in toward her. She stared up at him, wide-eyed as he took her shoulders, looking down at her. "Pressed the big red button! Just like a human! Oh, you're fantastic!" He stopped when he saw her eyes, his smile fading, his expression softening. "Oh," he said softly.

Maggie stared up at him, her throat tight. "I thought you were dead," she whispered. "I thought you left me, then I thought you died saving me and now you're..." Her eyes went blurry and she blinked, wiping her eyes impatiently.

The Doctor smiled a little, almost sadly, and pulled her into a tight embrace. "It's all right, Maggie. I'm sorry I had to do that. Really I am. But I couldn't think of any other way to get us both out of there."

She looked up at him. "Doctor, I don't understand." She looked away, suddenly embarrassed. "H-how did you fool the computer? It's psychic."

He grinned, widely. "Who, Mot? Well, that's the thing; it's only surface-psychic. Remember how you could stop thinking about things being all scary and they'd go back to being normal? I just spent all my time thinking nice and hard about betraying you so it would ignore you when I ran off."

She stared at him a long moment, then laughed, unable to help herself, the sound giddy and ragged. "Doctor, I think you might be crazy after all."

"Never said I wasn't. I only said I wasn't a patient." He winked and ruffled her hair, dashing toward the control panel. "Now, Mot can't get in here, but I think it's prudent to go elsewhere, don't you agree?"

She glanced back at the door, where something was still thudding and howling, and nodded quickly. "Y- yes, Doctor. But what are we going to do? We can't just leave Mot to its insanity. It'll just pick up someone else."

The same dark expression she'd seen before passed over his face like a shadow. "You're right, Maggie. It's not going to stop. I don't think it can," he said quietly. He didn't look up from the controls as the glass cylinders moved, and the low howling began again.

Maggie walked over and stared at the screen his eyes were fixed on. The readout was meaningless to her. She looked over at him, watched his dark eyes fixed on the readout, his jaw set. "What are you going to do?" she asked softly.

He closed his eyes a moment. "It's alive, Maggie. Sentient. Came into its own, all by itself. But if we leave it that way it will find a way to amuse itself. It will find someone, then someone else, and someone else. It won't stop. It doesn't want to."

She bit her lip, staring over at him. "You said its power was failing. Won't it stop being able to get anyone before long?"

He smiled, slightly, looking away from the readout finally. "Maggie, you're human," he said, not unkindly. "When I say 'not long' I mean for someone like myself."

"Then you mean years? Decades?" She looked up at him, worried now.

He smiled a little, and leaned forward, kissing her forehead. Suddenly he seemed every moment of his age to her. "Centuries, Maggie. Not long in the grand scheme of things. Not long at all, really."

She swallowed, taking in the enormity of it all. "Then, what can we do?"

He looked away then, back at the screen, his hand closing around a lever. "The only thing we—the only thing I can do, Maggie. It's a mad dog. And there's nothing living on the planet. Nothing in its solar system. And no one but we know it's here." He pulled the lever, his jaw tight. "No one will miss it."

The room lurched, and she would have fallen if he hadn't caught her. The engines, if that was what they were, screamed. Sparks exploded from panels. She clung to him, terrified. "Doctor, what did you do?" she shouted above the din.

"Crossing my own timestream," he shouted back, steadying her and grabbing at the controls, wrenching levers and spinning dials. He pointed to one of the levers. "Hold that!"

She did as she was told, and the TARDIS shuddered alarmingly around them. A light shattered on the panel next to her. "What?" she yelled back, confused and frightened.

"Crossing my own timestream. It'll cause a backlash, huge amount of energy, all centered on Mot's little horror house." He slammed his fist down on a mauve button on the panel, and they were hurled violently to the metal grated floor as the world exploded around them.

Maggie blinked, it seemed to her. Closed her eyes for a second as she hit the ground, but when she opened them again, all was quiet, the engines humming softly as the glass cylinders rose and fell slowly. The Doctor knelt over her, his coat folded under her head, which thundered with pain. She winced, trying to sit up, but he put a hand on her shoulder. "No, no, no. Not just yet, Maggie," he said, his brow knit with worry as he prodded at her with his buzzing, blue-tipped wand.

She winced as he held it near her eyes. "Doctor, I'm all right, I think. Just stunned. How long was I out?"

"A few minutes," he said quickly, and held up a hand. "How many fingers?"

"Purple," she said irritably, sitting up but unable to keep herself from smiling at his expression. "Four, Doctor. It was four. I'm all right. Just have a lump I think." She rubbed her head, feeling a bump swelling under her hair.

He smiled, broadly, standing and holding his hands out to help her up. "Right, then. I'm relieved, I don't mind telling you," he said brightly.

She let him help her up, her legs wobbly but feeling less the worse for wear than she thought she ought to be. She held his arm to steady herself and looked up. "Then... it's over? We... we killed Mot?" she asked, softly.

He nodded, his expression nearly impossible to read, equal parts resigned and hard. "I killed it, Maggie. It's over." He squeezed her shoulders, lightly, and smiled a little. "I'm sorry you had to be part of it."

"Thank you," she said quickly, cutting off whatever it was he was about to say. "If it hadn't been for you I'd be dead. Horribly, it sounds like." She stared up at him a long moment, and threw her arms around him, tightly. "Thank you. You saved my life."

He took a long breath before he wrapped his arms around her, hugging her to him tightly and kissing the top of her head. "I promised," was all he said.

Finding herself back in the hospital parking lot was much more disappointing than Maggie had anticipated it being. It was dark out, wisps of fog forming in the field that lay between the decayed hulks of buildings. For a moment she hesitated, but the songs of night birds and the buzz of traffic a block away made it clear she had been returned to her proper place. Behind her, the Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS, his hands shoved in his coat pockets casually.

"So it really is this dreary, is it?" he said, looking around with a frown.

Maggie laughed, shrugging. "I'm afraid so. I'm not looking forward to finishing my shift after all that. I'm exhausted and I have a headache."

He grinned, leaning his back against the blue box. "I can't blame you. But on the bright side: not eaten by monsters."

She chuckled, and walked back to him, smiling. "Yeah, I suppose it could be worse, huh?" she sighed, feeling her spirits drop as she looked up at the buildings. What did it say about her that being nearly killed by an insane computer was somehow preferable to going back to work? She pushed the thought away, looking back up at him.

She nearly asked. Everything in her wanted to ask to go with him, but then she remembered his eyes when she'd found him in the hallway. She remembered the dark laugh when she'd mentioned Daleks, and the hardness in his voice when he'd killed Mot. He cared about her, even after only just meeting her. He was strange and he was wonderful, and she thought he would be dangerously easy to love. He was also terrifying.

He looked down at her, raising his eyebrows. "Hmm?"

Maggie blinked, looking away quickly. "What?"

"You had a look." He smiled a bit, cocking his head to one side. "Which usually accompanies a Thought. Capitalization of Thought being implied." He winked.

She laughed, shaking her head a little, then looking up at him, more serious. "I'm just worried about you, Doctor. I just feel like..." She shook her head. "I'm being silly, it's nothing."

He ruffled her hair, gently, minding the bump. "Nah, I don't mind silly. If I did, I wouldn't hang around humans so much," he teased, smiling. "But no reason to worry about me, I'm right as rain." Something in his expression, in his voice, told her that he didn't believe his own words.

She took a breath and nodded, forcing a smile. "Yeah, I know. I'm just being paranoid I guess. After all, you've got this thing, and nothing's getting inside that you don't want there." She reached up, and knocked on the TARDIS door.

Four times.

The Doctor stiffened, suddenly, his expression haunted, and almost feral, his dark eyes filled with things she had no name for. And just as swiftly, he smiled at her, and it was almost too terrible to behold, full of a devastating sadness. He took a slow breath, and put his hands on her shoulders.

"Maggie. Quit your job," he said quietly, his dark eyes holding hers. "You hate it here. And it will kill you. Not as violently as Mot, but just as surely. Be who you were meant to be. All life is too short, Maggie Sullivan. All of it. Don't waste it in something you regret."

She stared up at him, feeling the weight of centuries, realizing he was not only speaking to her. She nodded, mutely, and hugged him tightly. "Will I ever see you again?" She feared the answer, but had to ask.

The Doctor kissed her hair again. "If you do, I'll be a bit different, Maggie." He pulled back and smiled, more genuinely. "But so will you."

And with that, he was gone, back into his box. She watched as it faded from view, the air swirling around her, spiraling dry leaves and newspapers in its wake. She stood there for long minutes, staring at the spot where the TARDIS had been, trying not to cry. Finally, she turned away, her decision made.

In the morning, she left her keys and badge hanging from her supervisor's office doorknob, along with a letter that outlined in detail why she wouldn't be coming back that night, or any night thereafter. She had no savings, no plan, and no idea what she was going to do other than what she'd decided after the Doctor was gone.

She was through wasting time.


End file.
